A/N: This came to me while I was half-asleep one morning, and refused to go away until I'd written it down. It's not a particularly polished fic, but it offers some possible insights into why distrust grew among the Marauders in the days leading up to Godric's Hollow, and also why the Prank played out as it did.
Disclaimer: Harry Potter, the Marauders, Severus Snape, and all their associates are characters belonging to J.K. Rowling. I claim no rights to them, their surroundings, or their situations. Much to my sorrow.
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"Fellows...this isn't good."
At the unusually serious timbre of James' voice, Sirius and Peter left off snickering and turned in surprise. Prongs and Moony were crouched on either side of Snivellus, who was out cold. He'd never known what hit him.
"He's bleeding pretty badly," Remus said softly, sitting back on his heels.
"So?" Sirius shrugged. "'s not the first time. And he'd have done worse to us, if he'd seen us out after curfew." His eyes glittered coldly in the light from Peter's wand. "He shouldn't have been out here either."
"Bleeding from the head, Sirius. And I don't like the way he's breathing."
"Pulse is thready," James noted, frowning deeply. "Blimey, Pads, why'd you have to go and hit him so hard?"
"Me? You fired first," Sirius snapped. "I don't see what you're on about anyway. There's nobody else around. If anything...happens, they can't prove it was us--"
He cut off abruptly as James turned around to scowl at him. "Is that all you can say about it?"
"What more d'you want me to say?" Sirius spread his hands, looking a bit baffled. "He hates us. We hate him. I dunno about you, but I'm not about to cart him up to Madame Pomfrey and get myself expelled over a stupid accident." The belligerence in his tone failed to quite cover the raw edge of panic beneath.
Remus was looking at Sirius as though he didn't recognize him. "Sirius, you hit him square in the skull with a Percussus hex. He's not responding to Ennervate. That's a very bad sign." He paused, waiting some response from Sirius. When none was forthcoming, he pressed on, "Accident or not, he could be permanently damaged--he could even die. You really want that hanging over your head?"
Sirius still didn't answer, glowering sullenly at the ground between his feet. Peter--always twitchy when the other Marauders had a disagreement--looked from one of his friends to another, finally piping up timidly, "Well, nobody's asked me--but I don't really want him dead, I guess. But I agree with Sirius, I don't want to be expelled either."
James turned back to the injured boy, rubbing thoughtfully at his jaw. "Remus, you've still got that book of healing charms, yeah?"
"It's back in the dorm," Remus said, taking off his school robe and draping it over Snape, who'd begun to shiver, despite the warmth of the spring night. "And they're older charms, nobody uses them anymore. I was just researching them for one of Professor Flitwick's assignments." He pulled out a clean handkerchief, carefully parted the Slytherin's greasy hair to press it firmly to the nasty scalp wound, and watched with concern as it was soaked through in short order.
"But they'd still work?"
"Should." Remus sighed. "All right--give me the cloak and the map. We've still got time enough before daylight, I think. But you all stay with him, and if he slides any further, take him to Pomfrey." Remus very seldom exerted his authority as Prefect over his friends. When he did, they generally obeyed without question. "Elevate his legs," he added as he disappeared under the Invisibility cloak. "I read somewhere that helps fend off shock."
"Right," James muttered, taking the robes that Peter handed him and wadding them up. When he'd followed Remus's directions, he sat down cross-legged in the grass next to the last person he'd ever expected to be keeping a vigil over, chin in hands.
Sirius watched all of this without comment. When Remus's footsteps had faded, he muttered something about keeping watch, transfigured into Padfoot, and took off. James was secretly relieved. He was usually able to forget that Sirius hailed from the Ancient and Most Twisted House of Black, but whenever Severus Snape came around, it got to be...difficult. He was certain his friend hadn't been aiming to kill--but equally certain that he wouldn't hesitate to write it off as an unfortunate mistake and sweep the whole incident under the rug.
Sometimes he thought that was half the reason he hated Snape. He brought out the worst in people--James included, if he was to be honest--and it was uncomfortable as hell to be reminded that they all had the potential to be complete and utter wankers, not so different from Snivellus himself.
Well, except with straighter teeth. And cleaner hair. And drawers. And not so many Dark hexes. All right, pretty different then, after all--but it was amazing the mischief you could cause someone with just an innocuous spell like Scourgify, given the proper motivation.
He wasn't about to admit it, especially not in front of Sirius. But sometimes when he got to roughing up Snape or one of the other students he disliked, and Evans started in on him or Remus gave him that sad, disappointed look, James felt...ashamed. It hadn't stopped him yet, of course.
Pulling aside the sodden mass of Remus's handkerchief, he replaced it with his own. Maybe it should, he thought unhappily. 'Because he exists' is about as bad a reason to go getting someone killed as there is, I guess.
"Oi, Wormtail. Rat out, would you?" he said after a few minutes' uneasy silence.
"Sure, James. But why?" Peter extinguished his wandlight and transfigured without waiting for an answer. Wormtail then squeaked indignantly as James picked him up by the tail, setting him carefully on Snape's chest.
"You should be able to hear and feel his heartbeat really well from there. If it slows down or stops...I dunno, squeak loudly, or something." Wormtail looked less than pleased, but settled down dutifully to his task.
James ignited his own wand so that Remus could find them again, and waited, fidgeting impatiently. How long could it take to sneak into the castle, make it to Gryffindor Tower, grab a book, and sneak out again? Time always seemed to fly when he was the one doing the sneaking, but waiting for someone else (and not knowing whether something might've gone wrong) was sheet torture. He didn't want to think about what would happen if Remus got caught and had to 'fess up.
Or, for that matter, if Snape woke up--not that that seemed likely. Wormtail looked to be dozing off; James nudged him awake, and checked the injured boy's pulse. Still not as strong as it should be, and his skin was frighteningly cold. How much blood had he lost? It was impossible to tell by the light of a wand.
Hope we didn't completely scramble his brains, James thought worriedly. Snape might be an unrepentant git, but he had to grudgingly allow that the man was brilliant. His mind was probably the only thing he had to be legitimately proud of. James didn't want to be the one responsible for snuffing it out, even if it had cooked up some truly diabolical schemes with himself as the intended victim.
After what seemed an eternity, he heard quiet footsteps approaching, and tensed. At this point he would almost have been glad to see a teacher--but it was just Moony, throwing off the cloak and coming to kneel beside their unlikely patient. "What took you so long?" James hissed. "It must be nearly daybreak--"
"It's three a.m., or thereabouts," Remus said calmly, opening the book and igniting his wand to peer closely at one of the antique spells within. "Here, give this to him." He pressed a small vial into James' hand. "I nicked it from the Hospital Wing."
"What is it?" James said uncertainly, carefully lifting Snape's head and trying to work out how best to coax an unconscious person into drinking a potion.
"Warming draught. Madame Pomfrey keeps all the really potent stuff locked up and warded, but I found that and some of the goop she uses for skinned knees and such. Should stop the bleeding, or slow it down, any road. Massage his throat--it'll trigger the reflex to swallow," he added. "Just mind you don't choke him." He shooed Wormtail out of the way, and started in on one of the charms. To ftrengthen thee Harte, James read upside-down from the page.
"Moony, you're a brick," he murmured as he unstopped the potion and set to the tedious task of getting the contents of the bottle safely down Snape's gullet, a few drops at a time.
Over the next hour, with Peter playing lamppost, they got the bleeding stopped, brought Snape's temperature up to something approaching normal, stabilized his vitals, and finally managed to close the wound. James thought distractedly that he wouldn't be a Mediwizard for all the gold in Gringott's--the sense of holding a human life in one's hands was terrifying, and he rather thought it would have been the same even if they'd known exactly what they were doing. As it was, they could only guess and hope that they were on the right track.
More than once he almost called a halt to the whole proceedings and said Sod it, we're taking him to Pomfrey. Looking back on it in later days, he would be appalled that he hadn't done exactly that; a fatal mistake would have been so easy to make. But James Potter had not been repeatedly accused of arrogance for no reason, and he felt an odd sense of obligation that night. He'd helped cause this mess, and it seemed only fair he should help to rectify it. And Remus and Peter didn't deserve to be punished for a mistake that he and Sirius had made.
Where was Sirius? Off brooding somewhere in the Forest, likely. Just like him to vanish and let Moony stand in for him. Though he was fervently grateful for Moony's steadying presence; he could never have done this alone.
Luck was with them once again, undeserved though it might be, and by four-thirty Snape was showing signs of coming around. Remus put him under a light sedative spell. "I think he's out of danger," he said cautiously. "We'd better get back to the castle."
"Where should we leave him?" James lifted his arch-rival carefully from the ground, shocked at how little the other boy weighed. Did he never eat? He wondered uneasily, then, just how often the Marauders' own pranks had put the poor sod off his feed. Soap suds...
"Near the Slytherin dorms, I'd say." Remus gave a low whistle, and after a few moments Padfoot loped out of the darkness with infuriating nonchalance. James had to reign in a sharp impulse to kick the big dog. Prat.
It took a couple of trips to get everyone safely to where they needed to be; the Marauders couldn't all fit under the cloak together, never mind an extra passenger, so James escorted Sirius and Peter to their own dormitory while Remus waited with Snape in the secret tunnel.
Finally James and Remus took their oblivious charge to a quiet corner not far from the entrance to the Slytherin dorms. Remus banished his spell and ducked hastily under the cloak, and they stood watching for several tense minutes, wondering what on earth they'd do if he didn't waken after all.
At last, though, the hapless Slytherin groaned and rolled over, holding his head and muttering some fairly blistering epithets. He lay there for several minutes more before sitting up and looking dazedly around. Eventually he pulled himself upright and meandered slowly back to his dorm, leaning on the wall.
Apparently his memory was intact; he came up with the correct password, and disappeared into the vipers' nest. James carefully took note of the password, out of habit, but decided almost at once that he would never use it.
On the furtive trip back to their own dormitory, Remus whispered, "He's going to have a monster of a headache. Probably for a couple of days, at least."
"Be more insufferable than usual, most likely," James answered with a grimace.
"He'll blame us for it, you know, even if he never saw us."
"I reckon he will. Can't prove a thing, though."
"Unless he goes to Madame Pomfrey. She could piece it together, maybe. We could get in even more trouble for what we did than if we'd just brought him back and 'fessed up."
"He won't. He hates the Hospital Wing. And he'd have to explain what he was doing in the middle of the night, to have got hurt in the first place. I don't think he'll say a word."
James was correct. Snape spent the next several days in the most surly, disagreeable mood any of them had ever seen him. And he insinuated with several biting remarks that the Marauders were somehow to blame for his woes, though he never did figure out how, but the matter never came to the attention of the staff. Nor did they ever learn why he had been out on the grounds after curfew, though the temptation to ask was almost irresistible.
Ironically, however, it seemed that they had averted one near-disaster only to plunge headlong into another. The next full moon, Sirius--still smarting from the argument that night, and provoked by Snape's "ingratitude," as he called it--casually mentioned the secret knot on the Whomping Willow, setting in motion a series of events that would haunt the five of them for the rest of their lives. James almost strangled his friend when he learned of the spiteful 'joke', and nearly did himself an injury getting to the tunnel in time to save his least favorite classmate again. This time, though, he felt justified in claiming credit for the rescue. Snape never forgave him for that. Good job he had no idea it was the second time it had happened.
If any good came from either incident, it was the fact that James stopped going out of his way to torment the skinny, unpopular Slytherin every chance he got (though he still retaliated when Snape came after him.) It was difficult to casually seek harm to someone whose life he'd fought to save, twice now.
And as an unexpected but wonderful bonus, Lily Evans noticed the change.
But more had been damaged that night than Snape's thick skull. A wedge had been driven into the heart of the Marauders, and driven deeper the night of the Prank. Though over the next few years the issues changed, and alliances shifted, splinters of disapproval and resentment remained and festered. All culminating in the fateful decision to entrust the safety of the Potter family to Peter Pettigrew--and finally, in a fluttering curtain at the Department of Mysteries.
Still, even so--the same veangeful choices that led so many to ruin also led one man to show mercy to an enemy; and thus, indirectly, to the birth of the Boy Who Lived. And long after James Potter had gone to his grave, the echo of that mercy compelled a dark and bitter soul to protect the child of his most hated rival.
Life remembers, even where the living may not. No debt goes unpaid. And every choice we make casts shadows down the corridors of Time, to haunt or comfort those who walk beyond our sight, to what ends we cannot guess.
Fin